Cannes Film Festival Reviews 2023: ‘Flower Moon,’ ‘Asteroid City,’ ‘May December,’ ‘Indiana Jones 5’ and More
The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is jam-packed with buzzy world premieres, from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” Todd Haynes is also back to unveil “May December,” featuring the A-list pairing of Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, while Disney is bringing Harrison Ford to the Croisette for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” New films from Pedro Almodovar, Jessica Hautner, Jonathan Glazer, Catherine Corsini, Hirokazu Kore-eda and more are also set to make their debuts at Cannes this year.
Cannes is often seen as a launching pad for Oscar season. Warner Bros. in 2022 kicked off its lengthy awards run for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” on the French Riviera, with the film going on to land eight Academy Award nominations, including best picture. Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness” also picked up Oscar nods for best picture, director and original screenplay. Two international film nominees, “Close” and “EO,” launched at last year’s festival, while “Aftersun” best actor nominee Paul Mescal got his awards start in the Directors Fortnight sidebar. All of this is to say the industry will be closely watching the buzz on all of this year’s world premieres.
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See all of Variety’s review from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival below. The roundup will be updated daily to include the most recent batch of reviews. Reviews presented in alphabetical order following the opening night selection.
Jeanne du Barry
Section: Opening Night Film/Out of Competition
Director: Maïwenn
Cast: Maïwenn, Johnny Depp, Benjamin Lavernhe, Pierre Richard, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory,
Variety’s Review: French actor-director Maïwenn can relate, casting herself as the courtesan-turned-comtesse in “Jeanne du Barry,” a sensitive and surprisingly low-key portrait of the French monarch’s last mistress. That Maïwenn saw fit to engage tabloid-embattled Johnny Depp as ‘her king’ is just one of the many hurdles she set for herself — but then, no one embarks on such a project with the intention of pleasing her critics. – Peter Debruge
About Dry Glasses
Section: Competition
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Cast: Deni̇z Celi̇loğlu, Merve Di̇zdar, Musab Eki̇ci̇, Ece Bağci
Variety’s Review: “About Dry Grasses,” his long, languid but slowly captivating ninth feature, is merely his latest work to examine man’s right, for better or worse, to be selfish, to be an anti-hero, to crave attention and isolation all at once, and to talk about it all night long. – Guy Lodge
Anatomy of a Fall
Section: Competition
Director: Justine Triet.
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz
Variety’s Review: Depending on where you come down on the question of its main character’s guilt or innocence, Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” could be seen as a kind of “Gone Girl” in reverse: A frustrated writer dies of suspicious causes, leaving behind clues that implicate his wife (Sandra Hüller). – Peter Debruge
Anselm
Section: Special Screenings
Director: Wim Wenders
Variety’s Review: Not enough directors have capitalized on the ability of 3D to convey a sense of physical depth; fewer still have seized on the possibility of adding philosophical depth. Thank goodness, then, for Wim Wenders. The first of two new films by the German veteran in this year’s Cannes official selection, “Anselm” is a tour de force 3D 6K portrait of the artist Anselm Kiefer, both rich in ideas and breathtaking in technical execution. – Catherine Bray
Asteroid City
Section: Competition
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jake Ryan, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Hong Chau, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Grace Edwards, Aristou Meehan, Sophia Lillis, Jeff Goldblum.
Variety’s Review: The director’s creation of a tiny desert town is an ingenious act of world-building, but what happens there has the turgid ironic whimsy of Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited” and “The Life Aquatic.” – Owen Gleiberman
Black Flies
Section: Competition
Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
Cast: Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Gbenga Akkinagbe, Raquel Nave
Variety’s Review: In “Black Flies,” a movie that keeps working to get high on its own intensity, Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan play paramedics who spend their nights driving through hell (I mean, Brooklyn). There are countless shots of the two in their EMS van, riding along under the tracks of an overhead subway train — the exact kind of grungy Brooklyn boulevard that Popeye Doyle went smashing through in the famous “French Connection” car/subway chase. – Owen Gleiberman
Bread and Roses
Section: Special Screenings
Director: Sahra Mani
Cast: Zahra Mohammadi, Taranom Seyedi, Sharifa Movahidzadeh
Variety’s Review: Produced by Jennifer Lawrence, this film tackles an urgent and timely topic through a committed on-the-ground perspective, capturing the experience of three people, Zahra, Taranom and Sharifa, whose lives as they knew them were effectively ended when the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 2021. – Catherine Bray
Club Zero
Section: Competition
Director: Jessica Hautner
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Amir El-Masry
Variety’s Review: “Club Zero” won’t be for everyone, but Hausner, channeling some combination of Hitchcock and Cronenberg and “Village of the Damned” and the Todd Haynes of “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” has now made an even more gripping and provocative mind-fuck. – Owen Gleiberman
The Delinquents
Section: Un Certain Regard
Director: Rodrigo Moreno
Cast: Daniel Elias, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino, German De Silva
Variety’s Review: Argentinian writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s delightful “The Delinquents” knows the feeling too. Over the course of its droll, meandering, indefinably strange three hours, it may well persuade you that the crazy thing is not to break from your normal routine. The crazy thing is to ever go back. – Jessica Kiang
Fallen Leaves
Section: Competition
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen.
Variety’s Review: A monosyllabic minimalist love story has the charm of all Kaurismäki films, but it’s a minor bauble – Owen Gleiberman
Firebrand
Section: Competition
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale, Eddie Marsan
Variety’s Review: Art-house darling Karim Aïnouz’s English-language debut seems disconnected from his previous work (‘Invisible Life,’ ‘Futuro Beach’), bringing a contemporary agenda to its depiction of Katherine Parr. – Peter Debruge
The (Ex)perience of Love
Section: Critics’ Week
Director: Ann Sirot
Cast: Lucie Debay, Lazare Gousseau, Florence Loiret Caille
Variety’s Review: It’s perhaps not a film that would sustain a vastly longer running time, but at just 89 minutes, this is a sweet and whimsical comedy that knows how not to out-stay its welcome. It’s easy to imagine a bigger-budget American remake hitting Sundance in a couple of years. – Catherine Bray
Four Daughters
Section: Competition
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Cast: Hend Sabri, Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui
Variety’s Review: “Four Daughters” may operate better on a scene-to-scene basis than as a holistic narrative, but within those individual scenes there are plosive little puffs of insight that are sometimes provocative, sometimes moving, and sometimes, unexpectedly, very funny. – Jessica Kiang
Godard par Godard
Section: Cannes Classics
Direction: Florence Platarets
Variety’s Review: All of which sounds like one of those Cannes–only special events, but au contraire: This is a program that was meant to be seen by the world at large, and with any luck it will be distributed that way. It’s an homage that invites us to look back, with fond fascination, on all the cinema Godard gave us, and on who he really was. – Owen Gleiberman
The Goldman Case
Section: Director’s Fortnight
Director: Cédric Kahn
Cast: Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, Nicolas Briançon, Aurélien Chaussade
Variety’s Review: In “The Goldman Case,” Cédric Kahn’s formally restrained but ultimately electrifying dramatization of a trial that gripped and divided France in 1976, that canny inconsistency is but one unexpected fold in a courtroom drama that finds equal intrigue in legal order and human chaos. – Guy Lodge
Homecoming
Section: Competition
Director: Catherine Corsini
Cast: Suzy Bemba, Esther Gohourou, Aïssatou Diallo Sagna, Lomane de Dietrich
Variety’s Review: For all the secrets and lies that shape the narrative of Catherine Corsini’s straightforwardly told but consistently intriguing new film, its most interesting tensions often emerge from things its characters already know, even if they haven’t acknowledged them out loud. – Guy Lodge
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Section: Out of Competition
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Mads Mikkelsen
Variety’s Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a dutifully eager but ultimately rather joyless piece of nostalgic hokum. It’s the fifth installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise, and though it has its quota of “relentless” action, it rarely tries to match (let alone top) the ingeniously staged kinetic bravura of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” – Owen Gleiberman
Killers of the Flower Moon
Section: Competition
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone
Variety’s Review: “Killers of the Flower Moon” isn’t an epic motion picture so much as a miniseries. Nothing wrong with that, except it’s intended for the big screen — where Apple has committed to release it this fall. Closer to two hours, “Killers” would make a killing, whereas longer than “The Longest Day,” most folks will wait to watch at home. – Peter Debruge
May December
Section: Competition
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton
Variety’s Review: From the rich Douglas Sirkian pastiche of “Far From Heaven” to the queer twist on classical “woman’s pictures” provided by “Carol,” his style can be chilly and distancing. Not so “May December.” As layered and infinitely open-to-interpretation as any of his films, it’s also the most generous and direct. – Peter Debruge
Monster
Section: Competition
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Cast: Mugino Saori, Hori Michitoshi, Mugino Minato, Hoshikawa Yori, Fushimi Makiko.
Variety’s Review: A tricksy timeline and the selective unveiling of crucial information keeps audiences from guessing where this convoluted portrait of a pre-teen in turmoil might be headed. – Peter Debruge
The Nature of Love
Section: Un Certain Regard
Director: Monia Chokri
Cast: Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Francis-William Rhéaume
Variety’s Review: A sexy, funny treat, Chokri’s third feature communicates some home truths about desire and familiarity, but not at the expense of comedy…The film is impeccably cast. As Sophia, Magalie Lépine Blondeau is wonderful, gifted with great comic timing and a particular knack for telegraphing that sense of someone who knows they’re making a huge mistake, but are compelled to go ahead and make it anyway. – Catherine Bray
The New Boy
Section: Un Certain Regard
Director: Warwick Thornton
Cast: Aswan Reid, Cate Blanchett, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair,
Variety’s Review: Inspired by Thornton’s own experience of growing up as an Aboriginal boy in a Christian boarding school, this is ambitious, tonally tricky filmmaking, bringing an unexpected dose of whimsy to social interests more austerely explored in Thornton’s excellent previous features “Samson and Delilah” and “Sweet Country.” – Guy Lodge
Occupied City
Section: Special Screenings
Director: Steve McQueen
Variety’s Review: When it was announced that McQueen would be directing his first documentary feature, and that it would tackle the subject of the Holocaust, dealing with the victims of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam (the city where McQueen now lives), my anticipation took the form of thinking: How, with a director of McQueen’s skill and imagination and gravity, could this be less than fascinating? But “Occupied City,” it’s my sad duty to report, is a good deal less than fascinating. I’ll be blunt: The film is a trial to sit through, and you feel that from almost the opening moments. – Owen Gleiberman
Project Silence
Section: Midnight Screenings
Director: Kim Tae Gon
Cast: Lee Sun Kyun, Ju Ji Hoon, Kim Hie Won
Variety’s Review: Killer hounds pursue the survivors of a fog-bound traffic farrago in director Kim Tae Gon’s lavishly daft action spectacular. – Jessica Kiang
Strange Way of Life
Section: Special Screenings
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal, Pedro Casablanc, Manu Ríos
Variety’s Review: Commissioned by Saint Laurent Productions (which is also premiering a Jean-Luc Godard short at Cannes), this half-baked half-hour serves as a sexy showcase for creative director Anthony Vaccarello’s latest designs, while barely delivering on the promise that an Almodóvar-made “gay cowboy” movie conjures in the imagination. – Peter Debruge
The Sweet East
Section: Directors’ Fortnight
Director: Sean Price Williams.
Cast: Talia Ryder, Simon Rex, Earl Cave, Jacob Elordi, Jeremy O Harris, Ayo Edebiri
Variety’s Review: Festival reviews just love to hype a breakout performance, to the extent that one worries about becoming the little critic that cried breakout. But here goes: Talia Ryder, lead actor in “The Sweet East,” is a star. There’s something of Kristen Stewart about her, not merely in terms of physical resemblance, but more in her gift for not just acting but reacting. – Catherine Bray
The Zone of Interest
Section: Competition
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Medusa Knopf, Daniel Holzberg
Variety’s Review: It’s a remarkable film — chilling and profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope. In a sense, it’s a movie that plays off our voyeurism, our curiosity to see the unseeable. Yet it does so with a bracing originality. – Owen Gleiberman
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